The latest feature to emerge from Britain’s Aardman Productions workshop, The Pirates! Band of Misfits , succeeds in spite of a faint but persistent sense of factory settings and finishes. Following their partnership with Sony Animation for last year’s computer animated Arthur Christmas , Aardman (whose co-founder, Peter Lord, directs here, along with Jeff Newitt) has returned to the stop-motion claymation that helped build the company name. It’s a strange thing, knowing that a movie was literally handmade and still feeling it is vulnerable to the glaze of mass-farmed entertainment. The story, adapted from the first two installments of a children’s serial by Gideon Defoe (who also wrote the screenplay), is the first source of this feeling. It’s 1837, and we meet the garrulous Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant, dining on his dialogue with impeccable form) as he resolves to enter an annual Pirate of the Year contest somewhere in the West Indies. Pirate Captain leads a ship of holy fools, each one sillier and more plainly named than the next. There is The Albino Pirate (Anton Yelchin), The Pirate with Gout (Brendan Gleeson), and The Pirate with a Scarf (Martin Freeman), among others. Pirate Captain’s rivals are announced with fanfare: Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven), the brash American, Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek), the Jamaican cutthroat, and Peg Leg Hastings (Lenny Henry), the… peg legged one. It’s all rather casual — not unengaging, exactly, but lacking a narrative energy all its own. Flashy introductions are made, but the set-up feels like that of a franchise coasting through its third or fourth installment. Pirate Captain cuts an inglorious figure—he lacks looting and pillaging chops but desperately seeks the validation of his co-pirates, who see him as something of a tragic clown. The Pirate with a Scarf plays ego-fluffer, insisting that real piracy isn’t about winning trophies, it’s about swashbuckling adventures and glossy beards. And Pirate Captain is certainly blessed with the latter: His facial hair is much discussed and much deployed, for good reason — it forms a perfectly sculpted pelt, with curls like browned fiddleheads. Much of Pirates! is as beautifully made, but you wouldn’t know it to look through the murkifying lens of 3-D glasses. About halfway through, around the time Pirate Captain attacks a ship carrying Charles Darwin (David Tennant) and is informed that his beloved parrot is actually a rare dodo bird, I slipped the glasses down my nose. Like many animated films with 3-D packaging, plenty of Pirates! doesn’t use the technology to much discernable effect. What you notice, then, is the way the animator’s work comes to life — begins to gleam, even — without the darkening of the glasses. I watched as much as I could of the rest of the movie this way, and began to resent the shots where the effects were central, forcing a reversion to three dimensions. In this case the depth of the actual fields involved in making the film are not worth what they cost in the color and texture of the clay figurines. As the images begin to feel drained of their luster, the story starts to spark with more of Aardman’s antic spirit. Devout monarchists will want to skip the part where Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton), with whom poor Darwin is painfully besotted, goes into martial mode to acquire the dodo bird Pirate Captain is lured into presenting to a scientific conference in London. A deadpan monkey whom Darwin has trained to speak with cue cards is a clever touch, and Grant and his inspired line deliveries only get better as Pirate Captain sells his soul for a bit of glory and then faces off with a Queen who runs a rare animals eating club and hates pirates for being so sentimental and passé. The sight of Queen Vicky slashing and burning in her bloomers in the set-piece finale make you wonder what might have happened had the movie not felt obliged to dull its shine for anyone’s sake. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Martin Scorsese has long proven his mastery of filmmaking, passion for storytelling and an infectious worship of the medium in which he’s produced nearly five decades of singular, sometimes legendary work. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that man of such fervency and skill would take so well to one of the rapidly developing hallmarks of contemporary cinema culture: Trolling. Scorsese joined fellow Oscar-winner Ang Lee on a panel Wednesday at CinemaCon , where the filmmakers told the industry crowd how sincerely they believed in the 3-D renaissance. I mean, sure, Hugo turned out OK ( critically , anyway; commercially, oof ), and Lee’s forthcoming 3-D epic The Life of Pi has plenty worth anticipating with or without the stereoscopic extras. But this … I mean, I just can’t: Martin Scorsese has become so enamored with 3-D filmmaking that he expects to use the technology in all his future projects. The Academy Award-winning director of The Departed told a crowd of theater owners at the CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas on Wednesday that he wishes his landmark films Raging Bull and Taxi Driver had been three-dimensional. Scorsese is so convinced of the power of 3-D, he said he only saw Hugo, his first 3-D movie released to critical acclaim last year, once in 2-D. “There is something that 3-D gives to the picture that takes you into another land and you stay there and it’s a good place to be,” he said. Yes! That land is called Migrainetown, and it is a good place to be if you are director with back-end points and/or an exhibitor selling the eye-cramping privilege for $16 a pop, both shuttered away in the local bank reinvesting the community’s money in more 3-D “infrastructure.” (“Keep them open,” Lee implored, for example, on behalf of Migrainetown’s independent movie houses. “Especially with 3-D, this is a new era coming. We have to keep up with it.”) And then there was… this , which apparently is the stock defense for anyone advocating new technology that completely takes viewers out of the movie : Scorsese compared 3-D to the rise of color movies. He said as a film student at New York University in the early 1960s, he was shocked when he heard predictions that all future movies would be filmed in color. He said anyone harboring doubts about the rising influence of 3-D technology should consider how color movies have taken over the industry. The 3-D craze allows filmmakers to accomplish the original goals of cinema, Scorsese said. “The minute it started people wanted three things: color, sound and depth,” Scorsese said. “You want to recreate life.” Wrong, wrong, wrong — they wanted color, sound and texting . Get it straight, Marty! Also: Come back to us! Also : If what happens in Vegas truly stays in Vegas, then why do I keep smelling sulfur? [ AP via Awards Daily ] Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
There’s nothing terribly sensational here to get excited about in the first two official stills from The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 , except for — ZOMG! — a certain pair of blood-red vampire eyes staring out at us amidst the smoldering looks and pale prettiness on display. And the almost surreal perfection of Robert Pattinson , Kristen Stewart , and Taylor Lautner ‘s complexions. Fun fact: Twilight ‘s vampires not only sparkle in the sunlight, they never have to blink. Hit the jump for images! For those who haven’t been caught up to speed on where we’re at by the time Breaking Dawn – Part 2 rolls around: The last time we saw Bella (Stewart) she was dying a horrible death while giving birth to her half-vampire spawn when her undead hubby, Edward (Pattinson) saved her by turning her into a vampire. Hence the blood-red eyes — the mark of a newborn vampire. Breaking Dawn – Part 2 brings the whole saga to a close as Vampire Bella embraces and adjusts to her newfound vampire-ness, which is a pretty awesome deal — super strength and speed, even more flawless skin, no need to worry about being ripped to shreds along with the pillows during sexytime… and, Twilight Fun Fact #2: Vampires don’t cry. The intricacies of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire physiology make it so that vampires pretty much have no use for tears. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and say that’s a metaphor for Bella’s newfound strength and self-confidence after spending so many movies unsure of herself and weeping over her star-crossed romance. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 hits November 16.
The Five-Year Engagement begins where a lot of movies would end, with a proposal. Tom (Jason Segel), a chef, is driving to a New Year’s Eve party with his girlfriend of a year, Violet (Emily Blunt), a psychology postdoc. He’s so visibly nervous that she’s worried he’s unwell, questioning him until he pulls over to the side of the road, slams down a box containing a ring and confesses that he was going to ask her to marry him that night. He still does, and she still insists on going through with his plan of a surprise rooftop romantic dinner at the restaurant in which he works. That’s because Tom and Violet are in love, and they’re also nice, down-to-earth, well-intentioned people, qualities that suffuse the film as well, generally for the better but sometimes to its detriment. The Five-Year Engagement is the most recent collaboration between director Nicholas Stoller and star and co-writer Segel, who have worked together on the likes of The Muppets , Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek. This film is their most ambitious not because of its long arc but because its dramatic currents are so submerged and minimal — there’s never any doubt that Tom and Violet belong together, just that they may not find the right place in which to do so. This unhurried comedy is devoted to realistic relationship issues like having to quit your job to move somewhere with your significant other, which is commendable while also posing a challenge. Tom and Violet sometimes feel like cuddly side characters in search of a main plot rather than anchors to base a film around; they’re solicitous of each other’s feelings to the point where they don’t acknowledge their own. It’s a good thing these characters are played by Segel and Blunt, who share enough dorky charisma to carry The Five-Year Engagement through a sprawling runtime to a deservedly happy ending. As Tom, Segel riffs comfortably on the beta male persona he’s honed over the years, portraying an accommodating guy who thinks he should be fine with putting his career on hold to head to Michigan when Violet gets accepted to a psych program there, even though he actually feels miserable and emasculated. And Blunt, who’s capable of being cut-glass chilly when a role calls for it, is funny and warm as the ambitious Violet, who’s torn between being uncomfortable with the sacrifice Tom’s making for her and knowing that in her chosen field, her options are limited. So Tom and Violet set up a life in Michigan and agree to postpone the wedding until the moment’s right. Meanwhile, elderly grandparents start dying off; Tom’s best friend, Alex (the always welcome Chris Pratt), becomes a success in the job Tom left behind; and Violet’s sister Suzie (Alison Brie) faces unexpected but felicitous motherhood. One reason the film’s central couple at times seem inadequate is that there’s so much comedic talent in the smaller roles. Pratt and Brie, MVPs on Parks and Recreation and Community , respectively, make a great accidental couple-turned-model pairing. Brian Posehn is very funny as Tom’s gourmet sandwich shop boss, as is Chris Parnell as a stay-at-home dad whose knitting hobby leads to some of the film’s best visual gags. And I was especially charmed by Violet’s psych department, overseen by Rhys Ifans’ Professor Childs and incidentally diversely staffed by Mindy Kaling, Randall Park and Kevin Hart; they’re genial colleagues whose interactions are lightly spiced with competition for limited academic positions. The overt theme of The Five-Year Engagement is that there’s no such thing as “the perfect moment,” but the underlying one is “for the love of God, just say what’s on your mind.” As plausible as long campaigns of passive-aggressiveness may be (Tom, for instance, suddenly declares that he doesn’t want kids during one family visit, noting that “sometimes the biggest balls are the ones left unused”), they’re not terribly fun to watch on-screen. Any investment in Tom and Violet’s endangered coupledom starts to get eroded by frustration with their lack of communication as the months tick by and they drift apart. There’s a lot of downtime between gags, though when they do arrive they’re generally good, whether involving an accidental arrow shooting or an alcohol-fueled chase down a wintry street in which Ifans’s character demonstrates some impressive parkour skills. The Five-Year Engagement is, for a movie in which a guy fakes an orgasm and (in a separate incident) stuffs a dead deer in his car’s sunroof, very grown-up. It’s grown-up in its assessment of how making sacrifices for someone else can also be a selfish act, and it’s grown-up in its consideration of how, while love is all very well and good, you also have to make practical decisions about where and how you’ll live. Sometimes, watching it, you wish it’d be a little less grown-up and a little more flexible in terms of what works as a comedy. (It sometimes feels like a lighter, happier take on Like Crazy or Blue Valentine .) But it’s rare to see main characters as grounded and plausible as Tom and Violet are, and when they finally find their way back into each other’s arms, it feels earned. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
In this week’s The Raven , John Cusack brings 19th century author Edgar Allan Poe to life in a mystery-thriller that envisions Poe locked in a battle of wills against his biggest fan: a serial killer murdering in the style of Poe’s most twisted stories. The piece is a paradox in itself, literary-minded meta-meditation masquerading as a pulpy mainstream entertainment; between genre beats and moments of Sherlock Holmesian heroism, Cusack and director James McTeigue leave provocations to be found or ignored, depending on your inclination. Whether or not audiences choose to dive in, Cusack just hopes they take the film on its own merits: “If you want a very different, quiet, Masterpiece Theater version of this, someone will go make that movie. But this is what we made. We made a dream about Poe.” To play the enigmatic and complex author, poet, and critic — who died of still-unknown causes at age 40, days after being found delirious on a park bench in Baltimore in 1849 — Cusack went deep into his life and work, attempting to understand the psyche of the man who loved (and tragically lost) the women in his life, bitterly fought his foes, yearned for recognition and celebrity, and yet carried such deep melancholy. “He was definitely an artist who was famous and wanted fame and wanted recognition,” Cusack mused. “He wanted to destroy the other poets of the day. He really was crazy, in an interesting way. He was such a lunatic!” And yet much of The Raven plays on the audience’s expectation, or perceived demand, for sensational storytelling — R-rated kills, gruesome murders, suspense. As Cusack explains, that is entirely the point. “[Poe] was satiric and fucked-up and pop-pulp, and he was also totally rarefied. So the movie is both of those things.” [Movieline’s chat begins with a round of My Favorite Scene in which Cusack picks Sidney Lumet ‘s The Verdict . More on that here .] I think when you watch [films] you just get affected by them and you let them wash over you. When you’re watching something good, you’re not thinking about anything, the story is taking you over. But then as you try to think back about the technique behind why it works, then you can dissect it a little bit. As I watched it I thought, you can’t do that anywhere but on a big screen. A novelist can’t do that because it’s an actor and [Paul] Newman’s whole life — all of the actor’s life and the character’s life, the character and the actor blur — a mature man at 65 with all the regrets, this conscience, these ethics. All into a moment, a cinematic moment. And in those three words you have everything. It’s just what washes over his face, what the camera sees. It’s beautiful. Have you always watched and read films so closely, so analytically? That’s what I do, and I’m a filmmaker too. I make films and, you know — the stuff that I’ve done that’s worked, I think it’s done by feel but then you look back on it… I don’t believe too much in technique, I think technique can sort of get in the way. I think there’s a way technique can liberate you by simplifying things. How conscious are you of the mechanics of a scene when you’re giving a performance, and how a director is going to bring the performance and the camera and the script together? It’s a collaboration and a conversation that you have with the director and the cameraman. It’s a conversation you have. Does that collaboration factor heavily into your decision to do a project or not? Yeah — I’ll say, too, if I’m working with James and we’re working on this and I see the shots he’s set up, and if I see something or a way to do something, I tell him. It’s very collaborative. If I say, “Are you going to be in here for this?” We’ll have a shorthand and he’ll go, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” So you start to tell the same story together. James is a very sophisticated guy and a great filmmaker so by the end of the movie we were finishing each other’s sentences. But of course you have ideas. I saw the set, we were on a huge set, and I was talking with James — it was this opera hall and I said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we had Poe standing up top, kind of like a raven looking down?” And James was like, “And maybe we’ll put him over here…” So you come up with these things that have that language. I think it’s still in the movie, the scene where he’s watching the ball. Yes, it is. In that shot he’s perched above watching his lady from afar and there’s such a sadness in his face. That was a shot we came up with on that day, me and James. What drew you to Poe to begin with, and then to this project? The film is obviously being sold to audiences as a thriller and a mystery but it’s also got a lot of interesting ideas about what it means to be an artist, to be be an artist who needs and wants an audience… I’m so happy you see all of that! It’s nice that you are picking up on that. Were those themes always there when the project first came to you, or did you help develop them along the way? James had the structure and the script was terrific, but I worked when I came onboard to try to elevate the language and texture of Poe’s vernacular and his idiom, because I thought it was so specific, and so textured and rich, that it has to really be at the very highest level. So there are some times in the script — because Poe was a mixture of esoteric, intellectual, rarefied air and pulp – Saturday afternoon thrillers, ‘I’m going to scare the audience and play on their fears, I’m going to give you a cliffhanger, I’m going to have a forensics detective thing where the killer is an orangutan with a razor – he was satiric and fucked-up and pop-pulp, and he was also totally rarefied. So the movie is both of those things, and creates that genre. It absolutely is. How do you think that will be received? So if you’re looking for The King’s Speech or some very serious, ultra-important movie, maybe you can make that movie. But that’s not really Poe! If you know Poe, that’s not really Poe; he was both. And so I thought the convention of Poe becoming a character in one of his own stories — the circular thing, the dream within the dream, very Poe-like — and within that we had the responsibility to make him as real as possible. Having now played him, what’s your take on Poe himself? He was famous, he was vain, he was at war with the world, he was theatrical. He went to West Point, he did all those things. He was an alcoholic, he loved his women, but I think he loved the women almost religiously, I don’t think it was sexual. He said, “I could not love except where death mingled his with beauty’s breath.” Just because of his past, with his mother and stepmother and his wife all dying in his arms, he was like an alchemist in that he was taking all of his misery and turning it into this great new art form. But he was totally fucked up by the deaths of all these women, and he revered them. I don’t think he played around. He wasn’t a playboy. But he loved the company of women and he loved to be revered by women. He hated men. I think he was only friends with a couple of men, and they were brief friendships. So he was definitely an artist who was famous and wanted fame and wanted recognition, he was competitive with other artists, he put them down — he said, “I don’t intend to put up with anything I can put down.” He wanted to destroy the other poets of the day. He really was crazy, in an interesting way. He was such a lunatic! A man of contradictions and extremes. A total paradox. And that, I think, is where you have to understand that about Poe to understand at least the premise of this movie. So if you want The King’s Speech , this isn’t that. This isn’t sort of measured and reverential. You’ve clearly done a lot of research into Poe’s life and work and complications, but do you feel like you related to him as well, personally, in any of those ways? Yes. I think Jung said that there’s a shadow archetype and in movies, or in art, we have these characters that become archetypical and I think it’s because they represent a part of our collective consciousness. So Poe, I think, was this pioneer into the underworld and into the subconscious and he housed all of our collective shame and fear and sorrow and expressed it so deeply that the image of him became sort of an archetype. So I think he was like a shadow figure, a figure now of your subconscious and your dreams. He’s like the raven – the raven was a harbinger to another world. Now Poe, for us, is sort of like the raven, sitting at the door of us, trying to say “You know, in your imagination and your subconscious is stuff that can frighten you and make you more in awe of anything you can imagine.” He was straddling both worlds artistically. So I think if you have a character like that, it allows you to tap into that in you. I can go use the Poe character to tap into my crazy stuff, you know — good and bad. So I don’t know if you feel you relate to Poe personally as much as you can find him in you. The Raven makes a number of amusing jabs at critics — Poe’s literary critics and rivals and enemies, at least one of whom meets a poetic end. Is the intent behind that to send a message to film critics reviewing this film about the film itself or how it might be perceived? My attitude is around what we’ve just been talking about, which is if you don’t like the conceit of the movie… review the movie that we shot. If you want a different version of a Poe movie, if you want a very different, quiet, Masterpiece Theater version of this, someone will go make that movie. But this is what we made. We made a dream about Poe. Our dream about Poe. Lou Reed made his album , and it was his dream about Poe. So this is me and McTeigue. But I think if they really know his writing, they’re going to really respect that we’ve done our homework. The Raven is in theaters Friday. John Cusack is on Twitter! Check him out here . Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
This is officially the most brilliant ceremonial first pitch gimmick ever staged, just narrowly beating out that time Bill Murray ran the bases and slid into home at Wrigley Field: Yesterday at Japan’s Tokyo Dome, Ringu/The Ring villainess Sadako (who’s coming back for more in Sadako 3D , in Japanese cinemas this May) trudged to the mound to throw the first pitch before the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters battled the Chiba Lotte Marines. Somehow she managed to see through her signature wall of scary horror hair to toss a decent looper before the ghostly spirit took over and…well, just watch for yourself. Yep. Just about the best thing ever. (Sadako entrance at 1:30.) But wait — does this mean everyone who throws the first pitch after her is cursed? [ Movie Collection via TwitchFilm ]
In movie terms, Jason Statham is a man without a country, an actor who fits so conveniently into a certain kind of movie that almost no one can think of him any other way. Where, oh where, can he go from here? Statham is the go-to guy for action movies that require an appealing, thoughtful protagonist who looks great shirtless, and Boaz Yakin ’s Safe is, unfortunately, just more of the same, or perhaps even less of the same. It has neither the Red Bull–fueled crudeness of Crank nor the Frenchified lunatic vitality of the Transporter movies; it’s not even as cheaply entertaining as the generic hit-man retread The Mechanic . Safe shows Statham comfortably treading water, proving all the things he no longer needs to prove – chiefly, that he’s a terrific action performer who moves with more grace than pretty much anyone else in the film world. The picture fails to challenge him. Safe is safer than safe – it’s so relentlessly kinetic that it ends up being dull. Statham plays former New York cop and sometime cage fighter Luke Wright, a guy who first gets on the wrong side of the Russian mob and then pisses off the Triads to boot. Somewhere in there, Luke’s old cop pals get in on the action too: They’re corrupt as hell, and when they finally get a hold of him, they’re all too eager to find ways to dispose of him. All three groups have a stake in one prized piece of property, who happens to be a person: Mei (Catherine Chan) is a child math prodigy who can hold streams of numbers in her head – business figures, safe combinations and the like – thus doing away with all those pesky paper trails. Mei has been whisked away from her home in China and pressed into service by the Triads as a kind of one-person bookkeeping service. Everyone wants the information she has stored in her head, which means she needs to be protected. And you’d think that Statham’s Luke, with his powerhouse brawn, dolphinlike agility and rough-soft kitten’s tongue of a voice, would be just the guy to do it. And he is, sort of. But Safe – written and directed by Boaz Yakin – offers too much mindless gunplay and indiscriminate roughhousing and not enough Statham, even though he’s most certainly the star. The action is ostensibly the movie’s reason for being, yet it’s so chopped up and dizzying it’s practically a distraction, and it pushes the movie into a strange state of inertia. What’s more, the action isn’t cleanly shot or edited – it’s almost impossible to tell who’s coming from where, which, sadly, is pretty much the standard in all contemporary action movies. But it’s a double disappointment given that Statham is such a charismatic star, both in terms of emotional subtlety and in the way his body moves. He has a few astonishing scenes, one in which he shows the deepest kind of sorrow without saying a word. Yakin – who has worked as both a screenwriter ( Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time ) and a director ( Remember the Titans , A Price Above Rubies ) clearly knows what Statham is capable of. So why doesn’t he use this movie to blast open more opportunities for this sorely underchallenged actor? Your guess is as good as mine. Statham does have a few wonderful scenes with Chan, who may not be the most relaxed child actor but who nonetheless has a bright, sparkplug intensity. When Luke pumps her for information, Mei grudgingly complies. “Now you know everything. Happiness for you?” she shoots back bitterly, and in that moment you recognize that even though she’s tiny and cute, she’s a much tougher customer than Statham’s Luke is. He’s taken aback by her precociousness and her perceptiveness, but you can see he respects her, too. That’s the thing about Statham: He has the face of a careful listener, to the extent that his gloriously sculpted body almost seems like an afterthought. The picture could use more scenes like that one, although perhaps Yakin didn’t want to make a retread of Luc Besson’s crazy-wonderful Léon , which paired Jean Reno’s hitman with the littlest hitgal, played by an astonishingly young Natalie Portman. But Safe would be so much better if it followed Léon ’s lead, at least in terms of giving Statham a multidimensional character to play. Statham does his damnedest, but mostly, he just looks a little weary. Those of us who love Jason Statham will just have to wait until someone figures out what the heck to do with him. (So far, Roger Donaldson has come the closest, with his 2008 heist thriller The Bank Job .) For now, Safe is all we’ve got, and you can bet it’s not taking any risks. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Welcome to THG’s Week in Review! Below, our staffers look back at the stories, stars and scandals that made the last seven days some of the craziest ALL MONTH. If you don’t already, FOLLOW THG on Twitter , Google+ and Facebook for 24/7/365 news. Every day, week and year, let us be your celebrity gossip source! Now, a rundown of the week that was at The Hollywood Gossip : The legendary Dick Clark passed away of a heart attack at the age of 82. Other stars we lost this week: Levon Helm, Jonathan Frid and Greg Ham. Yet another epic Mel Gibson rant emerged, this time at Joe Eszterhas. A shocking Pippa Middleton gun photo scandal has raised eyebrows. Adele was named extremely influential. Big surprise right? George Zimmerman Apology: I Am Sorry George Zimmerman apologized to Trayvon Martin’s family in court. He will be released on $150,000 bail shortly pending murder trial. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie got engaged. It was simply magical. Sarah Silverman Tweeted about getting an abortion. Ryan O’Neal has prostate cancer. Ted Nugent Rant Against Obama Ted Nugent went on an all-time rant against President Obama . Then he also compared himself to a black Jew at a KKK rally. The Secret Service investigated, but will not pursue charges. Speaking of the Secret Service … those guys like hookers . And apparently Sarah Palin . My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding Fight This fight on My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding? Amazing/sad. Heck, it makes this Basketball Wives fight look downright tame. Khloe and Lamar’s baby drama continues to play itself out on E! Jennifer Love Hewitt’s chest appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Rihanna may be dating someone. Her name: Melissa Forde . Tupac Coachella Performance Tupac Shakur was resurrected in hologram form at Coachella … … unless that was actually the real Tupac. Who knows. Troubled Amanda Bynes may soon end up in rehab. A bunch of celebrity stoners really enjoyed 4/20. Somebody let one rip on the Miami Heat bench … Shaquille O’Neal Analyzes Miami Heat Fart What was the highlight of the week for you? Did we leave anything out?
Like He’s Just Not That Into You and What to Expect When You’re Expecting , Think Like a Man is a film adapted from a book that offers advice instead of a story — Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man , a bestselling dating guide for women from comedian and TV host Steve Harvey. If the work was actually as life-changing and popular when it was published as the movie suggests, I must have missed all the women fighting each other over copies in the aisles of stores (an actual scene). But despite its cloying genuflections to its source material, Think Like a Man is rowdy and funny and showcases an immensely likable ensemble cast it uses to delineate its war between the sexes. The film centers around a group of male friends who conveniently illustrate the personality types Harvey outlines in the book. There’s Zeke (Romany Malco), the player who’s able to sneak past the most bristly of defenses but has no interest in sneaking around, and Dominic (Michael Ealy), the dreamer, whose inability to actually move forward with his goals has driven everyone he’s dated nuts. Jeremy (Jerry Ferrara), the non-committer, has been in a nine-year relationship with a long-suffering girlfriend weary of living in an apartment that looks like a dorm room; Michael (Terrence J) is the momma’s boy who’s still letting his mother do his laundry. Bennett (Gary Owen) is happily married (and, as Jeremy points out, so white that he’s basically “clear”), while Cedric (Kevin Hart), the film’s narrator, describes himself as even more happily divorced and is forever frequenting strip clubs name things like The Sweaty Crack and The Ass Factory. Paired up against them are Mya (Meagan Good), Lauren (Taraji P. Henson), Kristen (Gabrielle Union) and Candace (Regina Hall), women who are looking for stable relationships and, in the case of Kristen, a ring. After seeing Harvey on Oprah, the women all end up buying his book and following his advice, to the dismay of the guys they’re seeing. There’s a lot of potential for this set-up to be a retrograde one about landing your man — Mya in particular decides to adhere to a The Rules -esque regimen of refusing to get into a car unless the door’s opened for her and saying no to sex for the first 90 days of a relationship. But the book gets used more as a means of exploring gender power balance than as a way to trick guys into heading down the aisle — the movie certainly firmly believes in commitment and stepping up and that it’s no hardship to make a few compromises in order to sustain a relationship. For the most part, it’s the guys in Think Like a Man who have to figure the above out, and it’s presented not like a surrender but as a dawning realization — the women in the film are shown to be outpacing the men in terms of ambition and emotional maturity, and are largely waiting for them to catch up. The exception also happens to be the most interesting pairing of the bunch — Lauren, a high-powered Fortune 500 COO who’s been unable to find someone who matches her in terms of success and salary, and Dominic, who’s good with grand gestures but is a broke catering waiter and would-be chef. Henson and Ealy have an irresistibly off-beat chemistry together, and it’s she who has to make the adjustment in learning to deal with dating someone she initially feels isn’t on her level. It’s tough to buy anyone as phenomenally good-looking as Ealy being a perpetual romantic failure, but Henson’s also cast interestingly against type, her giggly warmth going against the typical portrayals of tightly wound workaholics. It’s been a decade since Tim Story directed Barbershop , but his facility with shooting how friends hang out remains unchanged. Think Like a Man divides its time between its various romances and scenes of the characters discussing those love lives with their cohorts, either in a group for the guys, or with the close gal pals each of the women has been given. Some familiar but functional jokes are made about the gender divide — after Candace meets Michael at the book store (you can guess what title she’s there to pick up), her account of him to her bestie Lauren (“soulful” and “sensitive”) is intercut with Michael’s more, er, physical description of her to the boys. Think Like a Man ‘s set in a sleek, upscale version of Los Angeles, the racial makeup of its ensemble neither a thematic focus nor left uncommented on — it’s just another part of the goodnatured banter thrown around between the guys. Hart is made to carry a large part of the comedic burden, and while his motormouthed shtick is initially tiresome, he gets funnier and funnier as the film goes along, shining especially when he insists his friends play what turns out to be a selection of professional basketball players (including Ron Artest and Lisa Leslie) for the right to their court. Chris Brown is among the other celebrity cameos, and actually manages to be amusing as a shifty lothario who creeps out of Mya’s bed after a night together and keeps getting her name wrong when he runs into her on the street. And of course, there’s Harvey himself, appearing to deliver lectures on various TV screens. With characters this charming, his appearances feel more like intrusions, but it’s entertaining to see the various women try out his recommended lines on their men — “What are your long-term goals?” Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The best documentaries tell you more than you think you’d ever want to know about a subject, perhaps fulfilling a curiosity you didn’t know you had. That’s the case with Kevin Macdonald’s Bob Marley documentary Marley , which stretches out at a languorous two hours and 24 minutes without dragging or getting bogged down in extraneous details. Everything in it – from interviews with the singer’s bandmates and his widow, Rita, to vintage and contemporary images of his hardscrabble birthplace of St. Ann Parish, Jamaica, to live-performance footage that captures his extraordinary charisma – feels essential, albeit in a relaxed way. By the end you feel you’ve learned something about the man, yet his mystique emerges intact. Robert Nesta Marley was born in 1945, to an Afro-Jamaican mother, Cedelia, and a much older white Jamaican father, Norval Sinclair Marley, who was of English descent and who barely played a part in young Robert’s upbringing – he’d visit the family occasionally, but he was a shadowy figure who, as it turns out, also fathered a child by another Jamaican woman. Macdonald grounds Marley’s story firmly in a sense of place, using simple images for whopping impact: A black-and-white still photo shows Marley’s childhood home, which is essentially a shack with a few windows. When Marley was 12, his mother moved her little family to the Trench Town area of Kingston, in an effort to build a better life. One of Marley’s childhood friends recalls that that type of “better life” often included going to bed hungry. Kids heard the words “Drink some water and go to bed” a lot, simply because there was nothing else their parents could do for them. Despite growing up amid that kind of hardship — or maybe partly because of it — Marley always loved music and always found ways to make it, and Macdonald does a superb job of outlining a mini-history of ska and reggae, musical forms built in the early 1960s from the spontaneous mingling of Caribbean rhythms and American pop music. One of Marley’s childhood friends described the home-made instruments used to make this music in its most rudimentary form: A box with rigged with strings known as a rhumba box; drums made from cow skin; and the instrument referred to by this fellow as the “shake-shake,” which really needs no explanation. Marley and his friends listened to American acts like the Platters, the Drifters and the Temptations, and after Marley made his first recording, in 1962 – a pseudo-spiritual called “Judge Not” – he became part of the band that came to be known as the Wailers. The group rehearsed for two years before the producer at their local recording studio allowed them to make a record: In the meantime, they played not just in town squares but also in cemeteries, to ward off evil spirits – if you could placate those guys, you’d be able to perform without fear in front of anybody. Macdonald arranges his material in a way that’s chronological though not strictly linear, covering a lot of territory with an easygoing cross-thatching of stories of interviews: Marley’s gradual but steady rise from ambitious, talented writer and musician to revered cult figure; his embrace of Rastafarianism; his association with legendary producer Lee “Scratch” Perry (shown, in contemporary footage, looking and acting extremely wiggy) and Island Records founder Chris Blackwell; and, last but not least, his propensity for consuming somewhere near a pound of marijuana a day. (Did I dream that, or is it actually in the documentary? Either way, he smoked a lot .) Most illuminating are the interviews Macdonald conducted with Bunny Wailer, founder and original member of the Wailers (who holds court before the camera, resplendent in dark glasses and a puffy zebra-striped hat), and Rita Marley, who tells how, at the height of her husband’s fame, she’d sometimes be called in to dispatch his extracurricular girlfriends from his dressing room. (She’d march in, announcing to everyone that it was time for bed.) Marley had a lot of extracurricular action, including a longtime relationship with former Miss World Cindy Breakspeare, who’s interviewed at length in the film. We learn that he fathered 11 children by seven different mothers during his lifetime. (One woman interviewed in the film is identified only as “Baby Mother.”) He died of cancer, in 1981, at age 36 – Macdonald handles the details of his death so matter-of-factly that it might not hit you until later how poignant they are. At one point his daughter, who clearly harbors a lot of resentment toward her free-spirited absentee father, remarks on his appearance after the progression of his illness required him to cut off his heavy dreadlocks: “He looked, like, so tiny.” If Marley lived the high life, sometimes at others’ expense, it’s worth noting that the women around him who lived to tell the tale – Rita Marley, Breakspeare and backup singer Marcia Griffiths – look remarkably youthful: No wrinkles, no cry. Macdonald clearly has a great deal of respect for his subject, and maybe even some reverence. But he doesn’t pretend that Marley’s great talent and charm existed in a vacuum – every minute, he’s finding a new context for the man’s career and life, and the portrait he ultimately comes up with is prismatic and fascinating. With pictures like The Last King of Scotland and State of Play , Macdonald has proved such an adept fiction filmmaker that it’s easy to forget he made documentaries for years, including Touching the Void and the Oscar-winning One Day in September . In that respect, Marley is a homecoming of sorts. It’s at once leisurely and controlled, like a Bob Marley song, with fresh secrets in every groove. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
